SECURITY at Oxford Town Hall and other city buildings will be reviewed this week after last week’s fires in South Oxfordshire.

A spate of targeted arson attacks last Thursday caused three major blazes and ravaged the offices of two district councils.

This week Oxford City Council leader Bob Price said he will meet council directors to discuss arrangements should a similar incident happen in Oxford.

Mr Price said: “We will be considering current security arrangements and if they are adequate.

“That ranges from things like smoke alarms through to emergency evacuations.

“Sometimes it requires an event like that [in South Oxfordshire] to remind you that you have bumbled along for years with particular ways of doing things.”

Directors have been asked to examine how the council would continue to work after an emergency. Mr Price said it has office space it could move staff to in Cowley, Headington and Cutteslowe.

He said: “And we can also set up a new call centre in just an hour if St Aldate’s Chambers goes down.”

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But he said the review was unlikely to lead to a change in public access to council buildings: “At the end of the day, if someone chooses to crash a car through your front door there is not a lot you can do about it.”

The fires left the Crowmarsh Gifford headquarters of South Oxfordshire and Vale district councils in ruins.

There were three other fires at a cottage in Rokemarsh, the Howard Chadwick Funeral Service building in Crowmarsh Gifford and at Roke Marsh Farm.

Andrew Main, 47, of Roke Marsh Farm, Rokemarsh, has been charged with four counts of arson in connection with the fires.

The damage crippled the district councils and the websites of both crashed when critical computer servers were destroyed.

The only services not wiped out were leisure facilities, tax and benefit payments and waste collection.

Both councils had restored their websites by Sunday night, but services such as planning remained unavailable.

In a statement the authorities said: “We expect a limited service by the end of the week as we are waiting for the delivery of new equipment and the uploading of data to enable us to function fully.”

Mr Price said planning would be a key area of review when he meets directors tomorrow. This is because Oxford City Council’s planning department is located in one of the upper floors of the St Aldate’s Chambers offices.

He added: “If there was a significant fire a lot of it will already be backed up, but what we will examine is if there are vulnerable aspects of it, just on paper.”

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